GMH's thread about gaming
a thread for my thoughts on the world of videogames, the videogame industry, the development and support of videogames, people's playing habits, etc. etc. etc.
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It puzzled me why my friends who were in-game were listed at the top of my friends list. People who were online and available to chat were listed after them. And at the bottom, logically, people who weren't online. The last one made sense, but the first two seemed like they should have been reversed.
Some years later, I was messing with the halinads skin, and giving feedback to its developer. At one point he created a border icon scheme for friends' avatars in the friends list, and he also seemed to emphasize people who were in-game -- going as far as the point of putting a big checkmark/tick on them.
I actually switched them around manually, since it made more sense to me that people who are in-game are, well, busy. Only those that are online but not in-game are potentially available for chatting.
Then it dawned on me. Steam was created with a strong design point toward multiplayer gaming. This feature wasn't supposed to merely advertise "hey look at what I'm playing"...but actually supposed to help people find buddies who were in-game so they could join them.
Well, most of my gaming has been single-player, and it continues to be. I do play some multiplayer games, but the experiences I cherish tend to be heavily skewed toward single-player offerings. And I naturally gravitate toward single-player games -- though I admit that there are some cool multiplayer concepts, such as table games or co-op action RPGs.
Of course, it helps that I have an unreliable internet connection. Also, it's big-name games that tend to have lively communities -- but I tend not to buy big-name games since I'm rarely ever interested in them, and they cost a lot of money, and the communities tend to die out after a while so by the time I might develop interest in them they've probably died out anyway. Not to mention said "lively communities" frequently contain a large number of people typing in broken English and finding it amusing to humiliate newbies and casting asperations on women/children/anime fans/gays/bisexuals/transgendered individuals/blacks/hispanics/asians/middle-easterners/non-english-speakers/non-americans/people not in their clan/people with a k/d ratio <1/your sexuality/your penis size/your mom/etc./etc./etc.. And not to mention that my parents were always a little suspicious about videogames -- both their addictive/compulsive properties and their content (the witch-hunting against violent content is an intuitive argument, even if not appealing). So why would I want to pay $60 to buy games involving people shooting other human-looking figures and then trash-talking and teabagging their oh-so-realistic corpses in graphics fidelity that I probably can't even run at full speed on my computer?
1. cartoony in its style. not just in its visual style (though it is, somewhat), but in its overall sense of portraying things. exaggerated, ridiculous events and characterization. it doesn't aim to take itself seriously. it laughs at its own stereotypes (rather than indulging in machismo for the sake of appealing to a stereotypical audience shallowly expected to enjoy guns, zombies, and boobs), and revels in the ridiculousness. anyone who tries to take this seriously can automatically be laughed of the block.
2. classes are relatively well-balanced, and individual skill doesn't matter as much. this game is a lot more newbie-friendly, because no matter how well you play a class, you still have some glaring weaknesses that you'll need your teammates to help you with. skill does help, but you can't just wtfpwn everyone on the opposing team by yourself.
3. emphasis on objectives other than killing opponents. it's not just singularly-minded about overwhelming your opponents with force. especially since each class has its own weaknesses, you actually have to use cooperation. so it's not just a PVP game, it's a co-op game at the same time. put another way, you can't win merely by being the most obnoxious jerk on the map -- you actually have to be helpful to your team. (it doesn't always work out quite right but it does often enough.)
4. free to play. or rather -- reasonably-priced. you can, for a small fee (just 49 to 99 cents), unlock eventual access to all the game content. admittedly, it's because of this that i got into the game. i wouldn't have dropped even $20 on this. to me, the game is a casual diversion and fun time-waster.
5. doesn't require a high-end computer to play. a really low-end computer might have some trouble running it at full speed, but you can still probably play heavy or pyro or engie (the classes where you don't have to aim as much) semi-competently.
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
did the devs not know there's already a game named Crawl, that's been around for decades and is still being played?
* Fire1, Fire2, Fire3, Lit-1, Lit-2, Lit-3, Ice-1, Ice-2, Ice-3 (though to be fair, "Bolt#" would be fine too. And "Fire 1" instead of "Fire1" would be fine too, I guess, just that the shorter names look more like "codes" of some sort. A magical code? Anyway, all of these are better than Fire, Fira, Firaga.)
* Meteo (as opposed to "Meteor"; "Meteo" just sounds cooler; FFVI actually has both a Meteo and a Meteor)
* Count (well, actually, "Condemn" is a lot more accurate, but for some reason "Count" sounds more nifty)
* Lit-Bolt (a usable item in FFIV, and the name sounds nifty -- like a trademarked name for a lightning bolt)
* Atma (instead of "Ultima"; "Ultima" sounds generic while "Atma" sounds exotic and also vaguely sounds like "atomic")
And "Heal" should be named "Cure" instead, because it cures status ailments.
Also, Cure4 should instead be "Full Heal", rather than being a numbered part of the series.
having various "orders of magical magnitude".
The original 1st-, 2nd-, and 3rd-order spells in FFIV have attack multipliers of 16x, 64x, and 256x respectively, according to Ben Siron's FAQ. That's 2^4, 2^6, and 2^8 respectively. For comparison, Psych does 16x, Drain 20x, Virus does 128x, Quake does 200x, Nuke does 400x, and Meteo does 800x. Nuke's power could roughly be described as a 4th-order spell, and Meteo as a 5th-order spell. Or if you want to follow the pattern more strictly and set 4th order at 2^10 (1024x), that would make Meteo a 4th-order spell and Nuke a 3.5th-order spell.
For comparison, Cure1, 2, 3, and 4 respectively do 16x, 48x, 144x, and 288x, though that uses the white magic multiplier rather than the black magic multiplier. White (i.e. Holy) does 336x, which is a bit of a strange number.
The summons use the black magic multiplier and do 40x for Chocobo, 80x for each of the elemental trio (Shiva, Indra/Ramuh, and Jinn/Ifrit), 160x for Titan, 280x for Leviathan, 120x for Sylph, and 480x for Bahamut.
(Due to the 9999 damage cap, Meteo is mostly useless, and Bahamut is much more efficiently used as it takes less than half the casting time. Meteo takes freaking forever to cast.)
"Tinkering" is basically approaching the game as, well, a game, or a toy. It's something to be mechanically explored. "Experiencing" (this needs a better name) is basically approaching the game as a medium for delivering a narrative -- rather than the mechanics being the focus; the mechanics are a means by which the story is presented.
I further hypothesize that this probably affects the kind of enjoyment one gets from of the game. For me, at least, when I feel I'm seeing the game from a "tinkering" perspective, I rarely get deep emotional enjoyment (a.k.a. "feels") from it, though it can feel like a fun thing to play with, especially if it has multiplayer capability. On the other hand, if I approach something with an "experiencing" perspective, I tend to expect gameplay mechanics that are intuitive and simple, probably because I'm in it for the story and I don't want to waste time being reminded that it's a game.
(I forgot whether I posted about this before in this thread so I left this intro in.)
Closely linked to this dichotomy is the JRPG genre. It's well-known for being a medium for presenting rich story content (whether you like them or not, put that aside for a moment). The classic turn-based JRPG battle system is very familiar with many gamers, yet also considered somewhat undesirable if only because it can get rather repetitive espeically if you just use the same strategy repeatedly to beat up randomly-encountered monsters. As a result, a number of JRPGs have tried to introduce their own unique game mechanics (such as battle systems and skill and stats advancement systems). They range from fluidly-flowing action RPG controls to very intellectually complex strategy RPG tactics, and even "indirect control" systems such as playing a card game minigame to fight battles.
An example of this dichotomy shows up in this article: http://nichegamer.net/reviews/the-legend-of-heroes-trails-in-the-sky-review-look-a-female-protagonist/
Specifically, this quote: Context: Person found that the battle system was a little tedious, and was disappointed that he/she couldn't just powerlevel her/his way out of the tedium.
From a tinkering perspective, this inability to "play with" the game system could be a significant disappointment. However, from an experiencing perspective, this would probably be less of a problem. In fact, if you're perfectly immersed in a game world, you no longer think of it as a game world, but you think of it as something you're in, and you react accordingly. Then again, if the game is designed perfectly for "experiencing" play, the narrative will unfold smoothly as you take actions, and any tedium you experience will actually be part of the narrative...and one could argue that a narrative-oriented game that's perfectly designed ought to be enough to suck in a player into "experiencing" mode in the first place...
Note: one has to be careful not to think of individual persons who play games as "experiencers" or "tinkerers". This really varies from game to game, even for the same person.
(And I don't need to cite any animesque works to make that argument.)
Limbless lizards are not snakes, but they move by slithering, like snakes.
Marble Hill is considered part of New York County (which is basically Manhattan Island), but is actually part of the mainland. (It used to be part of the island, but the streampath separating the two was altered.)
VNs are treated like games, for the purposes of how they're sold and used. They are sold alongside games, and run on basically similar hardware -- a computer with display and input devices. But in terms of interactivity, they're more like books.